The town of Cloncurry was named after Lady Kathleen Cloncurry and is situated on the Eastern bank of the river also bearing her name. "The Curry", as it is known by the locals, was born a frontier-mining town and it is the mining of the rich ore bodies found within the district that keeps the town prosperous today. The town is rich in pioneer history with the town being the birthplace of the Royal Flying Doctor Service, the first Queensland School of the Air and the arrival point of the first Qantas paying passenger flight from Charleville.

Cloncurry set the Australian record for maximum daytime temperature at 53.1°C on the 16th of January 1889. So long hot summers are the order of the day in the Curry. The 500mm of annual rainfall is associated with the summer monsoon from November to March and the high humidity and high temperatures can make life in the area a tad sticky. The short winter brings beautiful cool and dry weather, with daytime temperatures remaining in the mid to low twenties.

The Mitakoodi and Kalkadoon tribes occupied the land around Cloncurry exclusively until in 1865 while searching for grazing land, Ernest Henry discovered copper ore, and established of the Great Australian Copper Mine in 1867. The town took its name from the river that in 1861the explorers Burke and Wills named after Burke's cousin, Lady Kathleen Cloncurry, from County Galway in Ireland. The town's founder, Ernest Henry, grew wealthy from the profits of his mine and went on to discover many other mineral deposits within the district, ensuring the survival of Cloncurry.

The early townships population peaked out at around 1000 people and has seesawed with the local mines productivity and the price of copper and gold. At one point the population dropped as low as 40, but the major mines such as Ernest Henery, Eloise, Gunpowder, Phosphate, Selwyn and Mt. Cuthbert ensured that Cloncurry became one of the few country towns with a growing population.

Because of the isolation, transport plays a big part in the history of the district. Initially wagons from the south and from the ports of Normanton and Burketown in the north were the only means of transporting goods in and out of town in the early years. Though the routes from the port of Burketown were shut down for several years due to the "Fever" (Believed to be typhoid) that killed hundreds, the mines in the Curry prospered. Cob & Co included Cloncurry in its routes in 1884, but was put out of business by the arrival of the rail line in 1907. Cloncurry is also famous for being the arrival point of the first QANTAS flight with a paying passenger. This flight Qantas flight from Charleville to Cloncurry occurred on the 2nd of November 1922 with Hudson Fysh at the stick and one passenger. The passenger was the 84 year-old pioneer, Alexander Kennedy. Kennedy had pledged financial backing and agreed to join the board of the fledgling company on the provision that he obtained ticket number 1. It is interesting to note that Qantas is the only modern airline to have built its own planes. (For more Qantas history, visit www.qantas.com.au).

Prior to the first Qantas flight, a young Australian air force pilot named Lieutenant J. Clifford Peel while on a boat to fight France, set out a detailed proposal to establish an aero medical service for the outback. The recipient of the letter, the Reverend John Flynn, was so impressed by the proposal he had it published in the Churches "Inlander" magazine. Unfortunately Peel was killed in action in WW1, but Flynn pushed on with the idea. After several years of fund rasing Flynn had raised enough money to establish the first flying doctor scheme. Backers of the project included Hudson Fysh at Qantas, H. V. McKay, manufacture of the Sunshine Harvester and a young doctor named Dr George Simpson. On the 15th of May 1928 a one-year trial of the Aerial Medical Service was established in Cloncurry. Two days later the first call out was received and the crew consisting of Qantas pilot Arthur Affleck and Surgeon Dr Kenyon St Vincent Welch flew to Julia Creek to attend to their first patient. 225 patients were treated and 50 flights were made in the first year and at least four lives were saved. It took only a few weeks to identify the fact that raising the alarm in time to save a critically ill patient was the schemes greatest hurdle. To the rescue came the electrical engineer, Alfred Traeger, who invented the pedal wireless for communicating across the vast distances. Soon the pedal wireless and the flying doctor were to become icons of medicine in the Australian bush.

As for the local Mt Isa branch, in the 12 month up to May 2000 5145 clinic patients were seen, 981 transports were performed and 4944 consultations were given. Though the Cloncurry base was moved to Mt Isa in 1965 the town of Cloncurry still has the official RFDS museum, John Flynn Place, that is open seven day. Visit the RFDS's homepage.

In 1960, by sharing the Flying Doctors radios, the first School of the Air in Queenslands began transmitting from Cloncurry. The catchment area for the school is 800 000 square kilometres, equivalent to the size of the state of New South Wales, more than twice the size of the state of California. The school was transferred to Mount Isa when the RFDS moved and currently caters for about 240 students from preschool to grade ten.

For more information visit the Cloncurry Shire Council website.

See also:
Queensland Holidays